Banda and the Slovak Folk Revival

Chapter 4 discusses the Slovak folk revival of the 1990s–2000s with a case study of the musical group Banda. In Slovakia, audiences continued to enjoy styles of staged folklore from the communist era, but revivalists opposed these older styles and were outspoken in rejecting them. The chapter describes how revival folklorism is part of a movement to rediscover and reimagine Slovakia that sprang up in the 1990s; revivalists wanted to expand styles of rural music-making that existed outside communist-era folklore performance. The chapter discusses the mediation of neighboring Hungary’s dance house movement in Slovakia, and outlines the historical conditions that made it challenging to sustain dance house activity. The chapter argues that at the turn of the twenty-first century, revivalists managed artistic tensions and strengthened their reform efforts by becoming skilled neoliberal actors; making the transition from revivalism to a world-music fusion style allowed the musicians of Banda to be independent creatively and economically.